


In Orbit

by Ivy_in_the_Garden



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: But the “real” Kazuaki this time, Codependency, Holiday Star - Freeform, Human AU, Implied Violence, M/M, Not Fluff, Promptfill: promise, Victim Blaming, hatofulshipweek, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 11:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivy_in_the_Garden/pseuds/Ivy_in_the_Garden
Summary: Kazuaki never wants to be alone again. Shuu can fix that.





	In Orbit

**Author's Note:**

> UM, SO, this is not a happy relationship, nor is it a healthy one. No fluff in this. Enjoy!

 “The King said, ‘You must stay here, or the King will be sad.’” A pathetic sniffle echoes throughout the lonesome hall, the stone walls arching over the throne, all flaking gold paint and plastic gems. 

Shuu regards it all with a cold eye. So he’s been taken into some childish make-believe, has he? It’s all fun to play butcher for a little while, but _science_ must advance, and he’s never quite seen anything like this. 

 Outside, the Milky Way coils and cools; stars stare back, unyielding. 

“Stay on the Holiday Star?” he repeats slowly, carefully, so low that the King misses the thought in his voice. 

“‘Y-yes!’” quavers the poor little fool. “‘Yes,’ said the King.” He pushes the gaudy red robe out of his way, more a child’s idea of a king than a ruler. He wets his lips. “With the King, forever.”

Longing enters the King’s voice, and he staggers forward to grasp at the lapel of Shuu’s black coat, the woven wool smooth under his fingers. Terror widens his searching, desperate eyes. “‘You’ll stay,’ said the King.” 

Shuu gazes back, unmoved and yet for all his stillness, his mind is alight. His fingers find the red ribbon holding the whole robe over the King’s narrow shoulders and slowly, achingly slow, pulls it loose from its knot, like a troublesome thread. 

The King grabs his wrists, as Shuu continues to unmake the knot, and as the robe slides to the floor, a semblance of gravity taking its due, the King holds his breath.

”Surely you must have known who I am,” Shuu remarks quietly, surveying his handiwork, “to give me such a room on the Holiday Star.” A faint smirk curls his lips. “Truly, a butcher’s room?”

”The King said, ‘All visitors are to be made comfortable’—“

“Denial is such a fascinating mechanism.” _Your mind—your fantasy created from neurons sparking—is more real, more important than the jaws closing around your neck._

The King withdraws his hands, in a mixture of hurt and anger. And then the anger turns into a flood that takes Shuu by surprise. “What do you mean?” he sobs, and Shuu takes the change in address as a sign that the facade has begun to chip.

”You knew, and still you let me here... But why? What could it be?” 

A light from the edge of the room,  feebly marking a set of stairs spiraling up, up, confirms Shuu’s hypothesis: in a world of fantasy, there is always one more illusion. 

He investigates the stairs, his bad leg lagging, as the King clutches at him, sobbing and grabbing. 

“‘N-no,’ the K-King pleaded. ‘You must not-!’”

Dragging himself up, past the King’s scrabbling hands, hands that sprout and claw at him—too many hands, too many hands for his scalpel to have much of an impact—Shuu finds himself in a monochrome tower room, empty save for images flickering around a dusty figure.

You have f-found me,” it says tearfully. “I knew you would f-find me.” It wipes its eyes. “You’re n-not like the o-others.” 

The hands tearing at Shuu pause in their frenzy, waiting for something. An answer? 

“Do you love me?” he asks instead, faintly intrigued.

“But if I do, will you love me in return?” it  replies. “A man came to me once. H-held off the rain with his s-smile.” Despite his trembling words, the hands dig into Shuu’s coat. “But when it came for him to love me back—to accompany me to the other side— _he left me to die_.” The hands tighten on Shuu’s body, an almost facsimile of a death grip. 

Rather than being frightened by it all, Shuu only feels his intrigue grow, as he realizes just whom Hitori stole his identity from. 

How delightfully cruel. 

A smile comes over Shuu. “I would certainly never _leave you to die_.” 

The tiny figure glances upwards, a hesitating hope scrawled across his face. “Never?”

”Never,” Shuu repeats. “I find you _simply fascinating_.” 

“Fascinating?” The longing is open on Kazuaki’s face now, a desperate hunger that can only be satiated in the arms of another. And as he stares up at Shuu from his place on the floor, the hands retreat, slipping back into the darkness: it is only the two of them now. 

The silly little thing still hasn’t learned, Shuu thinks. Still hasn’t even after being betrayed. 

“I have so many questions to ask you,” Shuu continues, recognizing the desperate longing, dipping a hand into his coat pocket. “There is an hypothesis that, once traumatized, the victim will be drawn to the same stimulus—the same situation, if you will—in an attempt to correct the first trauma. It’s a cyclical thing, you see, but one that only leads to more and more pain.” 

Confusion registers on Kazuaki’s face under the simpering adoration. 

”How different do you think me from Hitori?” Shuu whispers, producing the blade. “You must have known, after all.”

Kazuaki’s eyes widen at the mention of his old lover, but as he does so, he never sees the scalpel arching across his throat because he has never wanted to.

His eyes never leave Shuu’s. 

* * *

 “Tickets? Have your tickets ready.” 

The train conductor busies itself, clipping tickets, holding a hand out when it comes to Shuu, waiting idly near a window, watching the Milky Way spiral past. Shuu shoves two tickets at it, annoyed that he has to put up with the entire uselessness of social niceties when he has research to conduct. 

”These are tickets for two living travelers,” it says.  

Shuu nods, bored now. “Yes, me,” and he shrugs off the cover of his latest find, “and my companion.” 

Unblinkingly, the conductor only clips off the ends, and returns the tickets to Shuu. “Have a good travel.” 

Shuu returns to his view of the galaxies as Kazuaki’s monochrome head tearfully, blissfully bobs in its jar. His  adoring satellite.

It’s good to be by Shuu’s side.

>YES

>YES

>YES

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Comments are loved.


End file.
